Cecily Fairfax | Hufflepuff | First Year

Cecily lives in Ingelton, with her mum, Genevieve, dad, Robert, and older sister Mia. Genevieve is a magizoologist from a wizarding family; she’s from Oxfordshire originally but has always adored moorland, and leapt at the chance to get a job on the dales, where she met Robert, a muggle who owns a small family riding stable. They quickly bonded over a share love of animals, and soon fell in love, before getting married and settling down into a quiet, contented life. Robert’s stable is small but pleasant, and Genevieve’s magic means some of the menial chores are alleviated; their two incomes mean that, whilst not excessively wealthy, the family gets by comfortably. Cecily follows in her parents footsteps of absolutely adoring animals, both magical and not; she takes every opportunity to help both her mother and her father. She has a pony, Duchess, a little grey Welshie, and the family also has a Labrador called Ruby and two cats, Teddy and Ash; she’s just as sad to be leaving them as she is her family, especially Duchess. The family is very tight-knit. Cecily adores Mia, a thirteen-year-old Ravenclaw, and Mia dotes on her little sister; the two girls are very close. Mia doesn’t share Cecily’s obsession with animals, other than horses — a love basically impossible not to foster growing up in the Fairfax household — but the two girls bond over that, as well as their shared love of reading. The two girls were home-schooled, on Genevieve’s suggestion, but the riding school means they still get some interaction with muggles and the non-wizarding world, although in a fairly limited capacity, although Cecily tries to avoid muggles where possible, as she’s terrified of accidentally revealing her magic. Cecily’s had an idyllic, peaceful childhood, and she absolutely adores the moorland, and the old house they live in and especially the stables, but she does have anxiety, and has struggled quite a bit with that.

Cecily is small for her age at 139 cm, and very thin. She has a pale, pointed, earnest sort of a face, with too-big blue eyes that, not inaccurately, give it a nervous look. Her nose is small and upturned, her mouth a shade too wide. Her hands are long-fingered and nimble, slightly callused from outdoor work, and her delicate bone structure is apparent in her tiny wrists. She has pale blonde hair, just long enough to graze the bottom of her ribs, not very thick and straight as a ruler; she usually wears it in two plaits, often Dutch, as she hates getting it in her face. Cecily dresses fairly averagely, nothing that stands out for a girl her age: jeans or a skirt and a jumper, pretty dresses when she has the excuse. Pink’s her favourite colour.

Cecily’s a gentle, kind-hearted, sweet-natured girl who’d die before hurting a fly. She’s fairly quick-minded and well-read, but would prefer to be out-of-doors than in a classroom, especially one filled with people she doesn’t know, any day of the week. She’s timid and shy, suffering from anxiety which can be quite severe at times, but Cecily tries to overcome it. She absolutely adores animals, both magical and not, and is especially fascinated by unicorns, reading everything about them she can lay her hands on (as well as having countless unicorn soft toys!). She isn’t very good at reading people, through either tone or body language, but is good at seeing what an animal wants. Cecily is of quite an earnest, eager disposition, and is very frank and open; she’s basically incapable of lying, and terrible at keeping secrets unless it’s just because she’s flat-out too frightened to speak, which is a not irregular occurrence. Even after she gets used to people, she’s still fairly quiet, but she quickly warms to a person once the initial boundary of shyness is broken. She’s quite naïve, even as eleven-year-olds go, and rarely even considers the possibility that people might not be being straight with her. Cecily’s of a hard-working disposition, and isn’t fond of idleness.

When Cecily was four, she and Mia were fighting over a rag doll. They were pulling quite hard, and one of the arms came off; both toddlers immediately burst into tears. Mia ran off to fetch Viv, and Cecily was sitting alone on the floor cradling the doll when the arm re-attached itself. Cecily was too young to properly understand anything but that the doll was fixed, but Viv was absolutely overjoyed when she came up, found the doll whole and Cecily grinning, and realised her daughter had used magic for the first time.